Total Depravity, Sin, and You.

Sin, harmartia (ἁμαρτία), missing the mark of God’s perfect holiness, this is why we suffer. We are born spiritually stillborn, under the curse of the fall. We are the descendants of Adam, and in Adam have inherited a sin nature. Due to the curse, we are under the noetic effect of sin. Sin has effected every aspect of our being. We don’t perceive rightly with our senses. We don’t reason rightly with our faculties, and we don’t communicate rightly with our expressions. We are not true. God is perfect in all of His ways. When a person says that they believe in the doctrine of Total Depravity, they aren’t saying, “I can do nothing good.” They are saying, “Everything about me, has been affected by sin. Through and through, my every attribute is perverted from what was communicated during the creation.” When God created us in His image, He communicated many of His attributes in a lesser way, consistent with our nature as creatures. Original sin broke that image. So God can use us to do good things, but we are not good. We can be altruistic, but even that is tainted, or colored by our pervasive sinfulness. So the next time you want to attack the doctrine of Total Depravity as Calvinist heresy, perhaps you should do a study in hamartiology. Maybe you’ll learn just how depraved you are, and hopefully, it will magnify how much you need the Savior. When the breech is impassable, you have no hope except that which the Savior Christ Jesus has wrought in His atoning sufferings on the cross. Soli Deo Gloria!